blessed are those who fight to remember their worth

self-respect on a personal and national level

I will start with the bad news: that among the general adult population, the percentages of dangerous personality traits are not small. Psychopathy is up to 4.5%.¹ Narcissism is up to 16.7%.² Garden-variety sadism³ is up to 30%,⁴ and Machiavellianism has so flooded the gene pool that it’s simply the water we swim in. This human personality space points to the ‘Dark-Tetrad’—an amoral, antisocial orientation to life that causes harm en masse. These traits are a form of intraspecies predation and, as evidenced by our home-grown versions of ‘Dear Leaders,’ it’s clear they’re not only widespread but in some chapters of history, applauded, protected, and promoted. In Zen, we forgo the statistics and summarize these phenomena⁵ by pointing to beginningless greed, hate, and delusion born through body, speech, and mind. It’s a useful way to hold what can feel unholdable.

In the essay below, Ukrainian journalist Illia Ponomarenko describes an emergent psychology of self-respect at the national level, driven in part by the Dark Tetrad.

Unless you’ve been somehow sequestered, odds are you’ve been in contact with one or more of these predatory forms of consciousness, or you’ve been actively entangled—possibly raised by them. Even if you shake your head, No, not me, this doesn’t necessarily reveal the truth. The average person has a very hard time grokking the nature of these personas and if we’ve been enmeshed, our assessment machinery is initially kompromat. We are subject to distortions that stupefy clear sight, and there are many to be wary of—disinformation, gaslighting, trauma-bonding, learned helplessness, disorganized attachment, cognitive splitting, the viscous trance of unworthiness. Until we know better, these fogs of externally-induced self-doubt can be molasses-thick. And as

Peter Limberg

notes, so-called dark-factor folks are extremely skilled at hiding their nature. They tend to be spotted only when it’s too late and the poison has already set in.

If you’ve struggled to wrench fangs from your heart, mind, and body—and to trust you are correctly identifying them—you know personally how arduous the process can be. Ukraine is in that chrysalis on a national level. The onslaught has been brutal, relentless, and centuries-old. Many souls have fractured in the tempest. But as they resist tyranny, individually and collectively, a bright side emerges from the entanglement. Today, I share this paradoxical good news with my American relations who may need to hear it. It’s from Ukrainian journalist Illia Ponomarenko.

In the rousing commentary below, Illia reminds us that, even in the bleakest of times, something crucial, something sacred, is taking place. A natural law of spiritual alchemy is being invoked—not to help us make sense of suffering, not even to stop it, but to make use of it. There is a living principle that turns destruction into creation, and to engage this living principle, we must first know that we are worth fighting for. We must know we are worth saving, worthy of being seen, heard, and respected, no matter what stories we’ve been told.

This awakening is a good cause, a noble fight, because out of this remembrance comes our most formidable power: the power to turn poison into medicine.

The effects of the Dark Tetrad are insidious and deep, but each time we see through the delusion and deception, each time we break the spell of unworthiness, we set a divine alchemy in motion, igniting our Jedi capacity to turn pain into wisdom, grief into compassion, anger into offering, hatred into love. When we choose this sacred pivot from pollution to regeneration, something astonishing happens: We burst into new forms of life. We become more creative, adaptive, insightful, stronger. We honor the source of radiance from which we came. Despite all the cloaking, black-hole psyches can no longer stop us from seeing them as they are: tragic states of fragility, alienation, powerlessness, insatiable need. When we hold all of this without doubt or self-abandonment, the peddlers of darkness become pitiable—for the spiritual alchemy that, in this lifetime, they will never be able to do.

I will not trivialize how challenging this process of transformation is, but as you read Illia’s words, I hope you take heart in the reliability of this natural law, and I hope you roar for anyone’s struggle to get out from under oppression—Ukraine’s, America’s, yours and mine. I hope you know there are forces for good, too—compassionate spirits within and alongside us. They know, as I know, that we are intrinsically worthy of love and respect. But sometimes, we do have to fight for it.

From journalist Illia Ponomarenko:

You know what the single most profound, far-reaching effect of Russia’s war against Ukraine is? Ukraine has finally learned to truly respect itself.

We are no longer some godforsaken "Russia's backyard", where corrupt mafia clans don’t dare to make a sound without the Kremlin’s permission, and where everyone lines up to lick Moscow’s boots. We are a nation that, in just a few years, built from scratch a capable army — the one that is now heroically fighting Russia, one of the largest military powers in modern history. To stand up to such an adversary in the biggest war of our time, Ukraine has been sustaining World War I-scale mobilization and made revolutionary breakthroughs in military innovation.

Today, Ukraine possesses one of the most capable armies in the world, with cutting-edge, real-time experience in modern warfare—able to resist an enemy that is vastly superior in everything. We have preserved a democracy and a brutally competitive political life like neither Russia nor any of its satellites country ever had. Our president, once a populist comedian, has grown to be a leader of the free world—someone applauded by entire nations in the halls of St. Peter’s Basilica.

We are no longer the punchline of imperial Russian jokes. No longer “village bumpkins,” no longer “little brothers.” We have finally remembered who we are—descendants of the ancient Slavs, the Vikings, the Zaporizhian Cossacks. Our capital is not a provincial town but a sacred, ancient Christian city—the beating heart of this part of civilization. And its holy sites belong to us. No one else. We no longer feel ashamed of our language or our culture. No longer do we see them as “backward,” “provincial,” “second-rate,” as Moscow has insisted for centuries.

We have long since broken out of Russia’s cultural orbit: there’s no more garbage Russian pop music on the radio, no endless cop shows from Moscow on TV, like we endured for decades. Instead, in the midst of war, we’re witnessing a cultural renaissance unprecedented in our history—Ukrainian music, cinema, and literature are flourishing. In Kyiv, tickets to classic Ukrainian plays are sold out six months in advance. We’re no longer a patchwork “post-Soviet country,” split between a “Russian-speaking southeast” and a “Ukrainian-speaking west.” We are a united nation. A person from Dnipro and a person from Lviv now share the same values, the same mission, the same grief, the same culture and history—and the same enemy. People from Kharkiv fight the Russian invader just as fiercely as those from Ternopil.

No one laughs anymore at the idea of a Ukrainian navy—our naval drones have humiliated the Russian Black Sea Fleet. We shoot down enemy fighters. Our drones and missiles now strike oil depots, airfields, and ammunition bases across Russia nearly every night. Ukraine is no longer a country you can show up to, toss some exploitative resource deal on the table, and sneer, “Sign this—you’ve got one hour.” No. Now you’ll be escorted out of the room with your hands shaking—and only after that will a balanced, civilized, mutually respectful agreement be negotiated. Yelling and threats no longer work here.

We are a country whose Chief Mufti has volunteered to become a combat medic at the front. Our Chief Rabbi works daily to advocate for Ukraine around the world. His son died in combat, defending Ukraine with a weapon in his hands. Ukraine is now holding our ground—honorably—against a whole axis of evil: Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And Russia has suffered devastating defeats and drained its once-vast Soviet stockpiles of weapons and ammunition.

And along the way, we’ve shaken up global politics. We’ve earned the trust and support of dozens of nations. We’ve broken through walls of Western fear, hesitation, and passivity, the appeasement. Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Kyiv in 2022 changed the course of European history when the best military minds were giving us 72 hours.

You can’t imagine how often we still find ourselves saying to each other, half in disbelief: “Can you believe this? Who would’ve thought our poor Ukraine was capable of this?”

What more can I say? Ukraine has already proven itself a great nation. We have countless enormous problems—and they’ll require titanic effort to overcome. But if we endure this war of annihilation, this country will have a glorious future.

1. Source: Prevalence of Psychopathy in the General Adult Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Ana Sanz-García, Clara Gesteira, Jesús Sanz, María Paz García-Vera

2. A percentage derived from Dr. Ramani Durvasula’s podcast click-bait titled, “The Narcissism Doctor: “1 in 6 People Are Narcissists!” How to Spot Them & Can They Change?” If you are recovering, I highly recommend her book, It's Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People.

3. Largely acceptable forms of subclinical sadism that are prevalent in modern culture

4. Source: Behavioral Confirmation of Everyday Sadism, Erin E. Buckels, Daniel N. Jones, Delroy L. Paulhus

5. Counterintuitively, we also practice non-villainization of the Dark-Tetrad in its various incarnations.